


Adrift

by EnglandsGray



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, PTSD Elements, Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Post-The Final Problem, Sherlolly - Freeform, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27479494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglandsGray/pseuds/EnglandsGray
Summary: holidaysat221b - Prompt of the Day – 11/9/20“Post TFP, Sherlock moves in with Molly while waiting for 221B to be repaired.  He experiences some PTSD and Molly helps him work through it.”A little response to a prompt on Tumblr.  Thank you to holidaysat221b and shadowyqueenbeard <3
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper
Comments: 19
Kudos: 70





	Adrift

**Author's Note:**

> Two important things...
> 
> Firstly, I own nothing here. All credit to the Sherlock creators and the BBC.
> 
> Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a far larger and broader condition than what I am touching on in this fic. Nightmares and flashbacks are just two of the many possible effects. I am lucky to say I have very limited experience of any kind of PTS, so I am drawing here upon elements we have seen the Sherlock team use to illustrate when a character is recalling difficult events in the past. I hope I have written with empathy, but I do apologise if this causes anyone reading any upset. 
> 
> Please reach out if you are struggling. Take care <3

There’s a rumbling in the distance like waves crashing on jagged rocks. A shift in the surface under her, jolting and jarring and strange. There’s heat too, close by. Such a heat – the burning centre of something breath-taking and vital. But she’s not afraid, none of it frightens her. It’s just new, that’s all. Staggeringly new.

Molly’s consciousness clears the final step and she’s wide awake. At least she immediately knows she’s at home, she has that grounding point of reference. In a way she’s adrift just like he is, but she knows she’s home.

She reaches out and lays her hand on his back. He’s turned away from her in bed. She can see the clock over his shoulder; 4.00 a.m. Soon she won’t need to look, because it’s always this time, or thereabouts. 

Her hand between his shoulder blades feels his skin damp, the surface chill. That’s all he will be able to feel, she thinks, even though all she can feel is the incredible comfort of his warmness next to her. His elbow is bent at his side, he’s covering his face with his hand. The sigh he blows out catches on his vocal chords. It’s a familiar sound to her, his frustration. But him hurting has only ever been silent. Even after Mary, he wouldn’t let Molly hear. She’s always been able to see it, clear as day, but hearing it? How many ways were there to break a heart?

She rubs her hand gently across his back, his shoulder. A lot has been said. Everything. And now they both know what the other one sounds like in pain, and not just hot-angry or lost-miserable. Truly hurting. After all the words which had passed between them since he arrived here almost no time after the police had left, what was there left to say?

“I’m here.”

__________

“You had me…”

“You weren’t alone!”

“I couldn’t find you… I tried, I did try…”

Again. Always this, or something similar. Desperate, pleading reassurances. Apologies, for only being a child, for not understanding, for taking too long. There have been nights when his voice has been so loud in her ear her own mind has taken the opportunity to remind itself of him pleading with her, begging her not to hang up, in the split second before she’s awake and sitting up, reaching for him. A couple of times, she’s wondered if his dreams were becoming her own, because he wouldn’t be by her side when she went to touch him. She’s wrapped her arms around him in the kitchen. Climbed into the single bed in the spare room with him, kicking off a pile of clean washing and allowing him to pull her in, wanting to transfer into his heart the strength she felt in her body as she clung to him.

There have been times too, when she has sat by his side on the settee, about to make a start on whatever food or drink she’s made them, in that familiar way. But she couldn’t eat or pick up her phone for a scroll or open her book, because, as it turned out, there was a gigantic difference between him being lost in thought and lost in memory. She can count the number of tears she has ever wiped from his face on those same fingers and all of them have been here, in her flat, where she thought she might never be able to rid herself of the sound of his voice. Where, once, she might have had to.

A bolt-hole, it’s been called. A safe haven. Somewhere to hide out, in a way. And in another way, she thinks, not to hide at all. To be himself. Fitting, he told her, his fingers tracing a pattern on her face as if he was making a map, to have been made to picture himself here when his heart was ripped from his chest. She would know what to do.

She didn’t always, though - and she told him so. Asked him how to help. It was always the same; he needed her. 

He is there, he is himself, he hasn’t changed. But his world has, it’s lost a star and gained another, and the adjustment is massive. Again. 

__________

“I love you.”

Molly whispers it, her breath just gently disturbing the curls on his forehead. Her fingers are stroking them, her arm wrapped around him where he is laid pressed up against her, his head on her shoulder. His arm is around her waist, protectively. She feels safe. She feels capable. 

“I love you.”

Sherlock’s breath skims across her clavicle, she notices, just before she finds herself having to concentrate on forcing tears back into the stinging corners of her eyes. She’s not sad. Not for herself. Good or bad, right or wrong, damaged and healing, she’s holding the whole world in her arms and being held by it in turn. She has the chance to find out how they might keep it. Whether what they want, what they have, really is as powerful as what other people seem to crave. She thinks she already knows the answer, even now, in the disorientation of the long nights and tentative days, with his home – his castle – and everything it holds in ruins, having woken again to the shocking sound of his heart governing his head. She’ll wait for him.

Cold-hearted men did not wake in the night with tears on their face. Monsters did not reach for the people they loved in the dark when they were far away. No. 

Good men, beautiful people, did that, and then they got up and grappled with the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading - hope you enjoyed.
> 
> Stay safe <3


End file.
